


Arrow

by FlowerMutt



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragon Riders, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, dystopian themes, not strictly soulmates in a conventional sense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26356099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlowerMutt/pseuds/FlowerMutt
Summary: Dragon opened its eye in a sluggish slide of odd membrane before the lid lifted entirely and then itlooked, stared for a beat long enough that Anduin fidgeted hands as the great beast took the measure of him. Anduin had met many creatures in his life from the cows and hens on farm to wild creatures of the forest, had looked them in the eyes and seen dimness of various shades, but the waythisone stared was almost as if, impossibly–As if it understood.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Wrathion/Anduin Wrynn
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter was written for 'first meetings' of Wranduin Week day 3, though the piece as a whole has been in the works for, uh, quite a while now! Updates are liable to be slow and sporadic, so I appreciate your patience!
> 
> The mature rating is for violence. I currently don't intend sexual themes to be present, but if it fits they will be, at which point I'll shift the rating to explicit.
> 
> The idea for this was originally derived from Eragon, but over time it came to deviate pretty wildly from the Inheritance Cycle, so I'd be relatively loathed to call it an AU of that series specifically, though you can certainly see some aspects of that series in this au. In addition, I will be using places names from Azeroth but please keep in mind this world is _very_ different, as will be explored through the narrative.

Snow crunched beneath fur skinned boots, game tracks paving the way home safely for Anduin, well worn as they were by herds of deer. The very deer he had stalked into unforgiving mountains, sheer and deadly with winding paths through a thick forest that even the most seasoned hunter might have found themselves lost in were they foolish enough to stray too far.

It was with pride that the leather pack sat heavy upon his back then, quarry having been claimed in the slow dawn of a new day when deer had not quite stirred.

A pride not at the taking of life of a young hart whom he had felled with arrow, nor of proving some shallow sort of ‘worth’ which truly might never be claimed from the loss of life, rather it was the pride at the difference between having food on the day table or not, surviving the rapidly encroaching winter or not, knowing then that he had made a difference.

His archery was a gift that had gotten he and his aunt through many a harsh season when stores had otherwise run short of what goods their little farm could produce on barren soils, and when Jaina had presented him the finely carved bow– a bow which had certainly cost her far, far more than they had free to spend– for his sixteenth birthday three springs since, it had become all the easier.

Still, he thought, trudging through snow up to his ankles, for all that he would be glad to be home, safe, settled before warm hearth once more.

And in but a scant few hours more he would be there.

It was with a merry hum of nameless tune that he walked as the sun slowly crawled across the sky until its light was kissing the back of his neck. It was in this way too he might have continued were it not for a piercing shriek, guttural and ferocious, that cut through the otherwise calm of the forest, startling birds from trees.

Anduin paused, breath a condensed puff that seemed to hang in the air as if waiting– waiting for what?

Silence was broken once more, something furious as the sound of splintering trees shattered in the distance, a bright flash of fire briefly illuminating the gloomy distance of dense trees.

Whatever it was, Anduin realised, was fighting something. Losing, too, if the shrill wail that followed before nothing was anything to go by. Mercy knew he should be on his way, should make his way home lest Jaina start to fret for him.

Feet had already begun carrying him toward the source of sounds, fingers twitching as the reached for bow upon his back, tracing the familiar whorls and patterns of wood where lions and filigree had been carved in and worn smooth under years of his touch and polishing.

It could have been hunters and a bear he considered as an arrow was nocked, picking silently through underbrush. It could, but no bear he had ever seen made sounds quite like that. Perhaps a wyvern then. Certainly they were rare in these parts, but not even last year one had been killed and brought to the village, townsfolk fawning over the strange amalgam of beasts that seemed to comprise it.

Drawing near, tucking behind trees and using shrubs for cover, he heard soft trills and growls, two cloaked figures hunched close to one another seemingly the source of odd sounds.

Yet it was not they who made his breath stutter and heart lurch as he leant ever closer. Rather it was the great black beast that lay sprawled in bloodied snow, a wing ensnared with wickedly barbed netting, spears far larger than any human could comfortably use protruding from various parts of the dragon’s– for it could only be a dragon– lifeless body.

And more than that even at the strange bodies seemingly caught between reptilian and humanoid that littered the clearing turned battleground in various states of mauling, charring, and to some who had seemingly been particularly unfortunate; both. It seemed the two cloaked figures were simply the lucky survivors of whatever had happened.

From reverence came complacency though, and in complacency was foolishness as a branch snapped with an echoing crack underfoot in his effort to get closer yet.

Immediately the strange creatures’ heads snapped toward him, slit pupils narrowing into razor edge lines as they affixed to Anduin where he lingered in shadows.

“Karkun,” the first spat– more growled, really, in a language entirely unfamiliar to Anduin.

“Zenn az zi!”

They lurched into motion, taloned hands reaching for spear and sword as smoke leaked from their black scaled snouts, lips curled into feral snarls as they closed distance between he and they far more quickly than their lumbering gaits should have made possible.

A startled yelp escaped him, stumbling, bow raised quickly, arrow drawn before it was loosed with a soft whoosh followed by stuttered shriek that silenced before it had truly begun, one of the lizard men hitting the ground with a thud.

The second didn’t seem to bat an eyelid, seemingly unphased, great spear in hand swinging for Anduin’s head, hissing its outrage when he ducked, Anduin’s heart in his mouth as he scrambled for an escape from it.

As skilled as he was with his bow, violence, fighting, had never been something that came so easily to him for all Jaina had tried so many times to teach him. How he wished now, as he reached for another arrow, those lessons had sunk in better.

Creature swung again though this time did not miss even as Anduin tried to escape once more, its metal biting into his shoulder as he hissed in pain, arrow dropped in shock.

_ ‘Idiot _ ,’ he thought bitterly, reaching for another but too slow he knew, too slow as the strange creature raised its weapon once more and would surely bring it down in true this time. Even so he did not flinch, did not look away, audacious even in the face of a certain end.

Say for it was not his end as the beast was lit ablaze by a coating of something viscous that burnt hot colliding with it, molten earth drenching one side of horrid amalgam that wailed in agony. It writhed where it dropped to the earth as Anduin finally, wincing, looked away from horrid vision before him and saw then the source of whatever was burning his attacker away.

The dragon, one apparently not entirely lifeless, had its head lifted from where it lay, trails of smoke ebbing from it, rumbling a hiss that seemed to echo through the earth itself and jar Anduin’s very bones.

Suddenly the now-silent lizard beast seemed like a far, far better option.

The dragon snorted, almost seeming satisfied with itself as blood splattered snow with exhale, its head flopping to earth once more with solid thud and weak trill. He should leave, he knew as he had also known he should have ignored all of this to begin with, hands wringing against the bow he clutched as he drew comfort from it. He should turn away, find the game trail, and go home.

Anduin was gifted in many ways, but so too was he just as cursed, his heart a bleeding thing as he looked between his charred assailant and his likely unwitting saviour. Certainly, the dragon could have meant to save him no more than any wild animal might have for all knew the tales of them, rabid beasts that they were. Monstrous, terrible, and far more vicious than ought else that wandered the lands.

Save him it had, though.

Heaving a sigh, steps were cautious as he made forth, stepping about bodies from conflict that had drawn him until finally, finally he stopped before the dragon’s form, prone but for the labored breaths it was drawing in and out with great gusts which flurried snow.

“If you eat me,” he started, unsure as bow was set to his back once more, halting far too close to the creature than should have been considered sane, “I swear I will give you the most terrible indigestion.”

Dragon opened its eye in a sluggish slide of odd membrane before the lid lifted entirely and then it  _ looked,  _ stared for a beat long enough that Anduin fidgeted hands as the great beast took the measure of him. Anduin had met many creatures in his life from the cows and hens on farm to wild creatures of the forest, had looked them in the eyes and seen dimness of various shades, but the way  _ this  _ one stared was almost as if, impossibly–

As if it understood.

Anduin sighed, knowing better, knowing as all did for dragons were the monsters mothers would use to school naughty children. Were the things that not only went bump in the night, but brought the entire sky down upon you in feral madness. They did not  _ think  _ and they certainly did not  _ understand,  _ and for that the world could only be glad that they were so scarcely seen.

“Don’t look at me like that,” came his discomforted huff as the dragon's breath rattled, pained, before it snorted at him. It had the audacity to sound almost amused even as he regarded it wary, perplexed.

Naturally, Anduin was inclined to take its lack of murdering him quite yet as an agreement, turning then to survey the creature in earnest for the first time.

The dragon was perhaps a little bigger than the old horse they borrowed every spring to till fields, yet more sturdy and clad in armour-like black scales that seemed to glitter the colours of the rainbow under the encroaching twilight. Something caught within his breast, a quiet admiration as his hand reached boldly, hesitating only briefly before brushing pads of fingers against inky hide ever so.

He hadn’t known what he expected it to feel like, not really, but the almost silken texture to hard scales had not been it. The rolling heat that radiated from it, that seemed to curl beneath Anduin’s skin in an electric dance igniting nerves until hairs upon the back of his neck stood on end had not been it. Enthralled he was though, cadence of world shifting, giving way, until there was nothing but this and he swore that, in that moment, that if he truly listened he might hear as surely as he felt the solid ‘thud’s’ of the great creature’s heart.

“Oh,” he breathed, pressing his hand against scales in earnest wonder when the dragon did little more than shudder under his questing touch. “You’re beautiful–”

“Naturally,” came a rasping voice, one that reverbated beneath his touch.

Hand retracted suddenly, startled yell escaping him as he backpedaled from the dragon who had spoken. Talked as surely as he had, more than any mindless brute should. A revelation all its own, one which tipped the world upon its axis.

“I– you–” Breath a rising staccato, trying to realign everything he knew, everything he had been told, and reorder it under new evidence. The impossibility of it, of the stories he had been told since boyhood, clashed so terribly with the evidence laying before his very eyes.

“Can talk? You are gawking, little human,” huffed the dragon, shifting uncomfortably to slide his head until it was able to face him. “Is this how your kind thank those who save you? Clearly I can talk; that or you have gone entirely mad. I suppose you may believe whichever is easiest for you to grasp.”

Shock gave way to indignance, a bright candle flickering to life at the  _ audacity  _ of it… him? Certainly, to regard the dragon as an ‘it’ suddenly seemed terribly, terribly wrong.

“Saved me?  _ You  _ are the one laying there bleeding–”

“And you are standing there bleeding. You are very astute, little human, but please, do continue. I am enjoying our conversation.”

“If it wasn’t for me, those things would have most certainly killed you. Look at you, you are hardly in any state to do anything.”

A truth the dragon could not deny, did not even try though even yet huffed against the prospect before resigning to it as body tremoured in pain, head lolling once more with clicking trills the only thing that truly betrayed the discomfort he was in.

And what discomfort it must have been, Anduin thought, incandescence snuffed just as quickly, heart aching against the sight before him.

Stepping forth again, he gazed in earnest upon wounds that littered scaled body from deep gouges carved by blades to the spear lodged within meaty flank, another just below it, and a final which had caught into dense muscle where wing met body, the limb held awkwardly ajar unable to fold as it otherwise might.

Worse than that, even, was the barbed netting that had snared the very same wing, shredding the delicate folds of it, blood oozing from so many points and marring the snow below that it turned even Anduin’s stomach.

“What are you doing?” The dragon rumbled after a beat of silence spanning evidently too long for his comfort, hubris having given way to soft strain edging his deep voice.

“I don’t know yet.” A soft frown claimed Anduin, shedding the pack from his back and kneeling, unbuckling it and rooting within it past butchered remains of his quarry and what necessities he had brought with him for his venture before his hand closed upon a leather pouch, triumph bearing smile to his face as he wrested it free.

“Helping you,” Anduin continued. “If I can, at the very least…”

Dragon paused, strange clicking noise rattling from him. “Why?”

Anduin shrugged, setting the pack away and standing once more with the pouch tucked into a breast pocket of the weather worn jacket that cloaked him, setting hands gently instead to the wicked spear embedded within the dragon’s flank. “It is the right thing to do.” And no simpler an explanation was there than that.

World could be cold, could be cruel, but if there was but the  _ flicker  _ of something better within all that darkness then surely, surely that was worth more than ought else.

The dragon might eat him, might do all manner of awful things to him, an array of olden tales in musty books filling in the gaps for his vivid imagination from grim decapitation, to skinning, to gutting, to burning, to-- well, the list rather went on. The dragon  _ could  _ eat him, but as surely as he knew that so too did he know that for some reason it had not yet tried.

His grip tightened on the lance, bracing a foot against the dragon's flank. “I’m terribly sorry for this, but please, try to stay still,” he soothed, softly, gently, as one might a particularly spooked mare.

The dragon seemed unconvinced with a roll of smoke leaking from his nostrils, the only answer as a crimson and gold eye bored into him before asking; “do you have a name?”

Anduin heaved all at once, ignoring white hot shock that ran through his own wounded shoulder at strain, biting at the inside of his cheek to prevent himself crying out against it. The spear, so unwilling to move, slid bit by grizzly bit until finally the dragon’s flesh was rent and the awful weapon came free only for Anduin to toss it away in a wretched sort of disgust.

To the dragon’s credit he barely flinched, instead taking to gouging at the earth with sharp talons of his fore-paw, hissing his discomfort though settling quickly once the spear was finally free.

“Anduin. My name is Anduin.”

“Wrathion,” was the dragon’s own curt introduction. “You are taking this entire ‘oh, the big scary dragon can talk’ thing really quite well, I must say.”

Anduin could not help the laugh that escaped, a light cadence tinged with only the barest hint of nervousness as he grasped the second spear. “I suppose I expected dragons to be bigger, you know? You seem quite… small.”

Laugh in earnest he did at Wrathion’s scathing glare then, his teeth clacking in a mock snap before clenching tight as Anduin set to removing the second blade as he had the first, discarding it with as much disdain too once he had liberated it from Wrathion.

“You are awfully rude, did you know?”

Anduin hummed, crouching with pouch in hand once more, reaching within it and coming away with a handful of dried moss. “My auntie says I’m charming, I’ll have you know.” Ignoring of course the times she called him stubborn, rash, foolhardy…

He much preferred charming.

“I feel that is much like when a mother fawns over an ugly babe simply because it is hers– not something one ought to be proud of, I shouldn’t think.”

“And I feel you are talking far too much for someone who has lost quite so much blood,” he sighed, pressing moss against deep punctures in an effort to stem the flow at least a little before he reached deep, reached for the tentative well of divinity within, a soft prayer mumbled beneath his breath as an ephemeral glow there one moment was gone the next, dancing across obsidian before winking out of existence, sinking into wounded flesh even as Jaina’s warnings echoed in his head.

Magics, all of them, had been dying out for generations. A thing coveted viciously by some and feared terribly by others, the unknown and rare as alluring as it could be terrifying. Anduin could remember the first time he had sparked Light to life, the warmth it spread through him, the sense of  _ wholeness  _ it brought. So too did he remember the worry on Jaina’s face, her words soft, ever loving, impressing upon him the importance of hiding it. Himself. That no one must see, must know, and so he had.

For the most part.

But when he saw someone in need, someone he could help, how might he ever turn a blind eye so long as he was careful? And here, now, who would a dragon of all things even tell?

Certainly as inexperienced as he was, as untrained as he was, he could not truly heal such awful wounds, but he could at very least ease it some and aid the healing along. How then could he not? How could he see something, knowing he could act, and then not? Jaina was right, no doubt, but Anduin could no more ignore his heart than he could her warnings.

A wary sigh escaped him, rising to his feet once more when he was satisfied with what little he could do, glad at least that wounds did not look quite so angry before turning to mangled wing. That was a task far, far more daunting.

“Those creatures–”

“Drakonids.”

“Those  _ drakonids.  _ What were they doing here? They look awfully similar to you, yet they attacked you?”

“You ask too many questions. Do you always talk so much to dragons you have just met?” Wrathion tsk’d, hawkish eye unwavering in its regard of Anduin. A lesser person would have certainly squirmed under it, though ever defiant Anduin stared back, innocent flutter of lashes as head canted.

“Well, you are the only dragon I’ve ever met.”

“Truly? I’m shocked. You are quite shrill when shocked, you know? Adorable, really.”

“Funny,” was Anduin’s exasperated gripe.

“My sense of humour is impeccable, I’m certainly glad you’ve taken note.” Wrathion attempted to shift, perhaps hoping to right himself though he stilled as soon as the ensnared wing twitched, tremor wracking through his body before he relented against it. Against Anduin too as he continued; “they were not looking for me and I am in no way affiliated with them, as I am sure you are quite intelligent enough to have surmised, all things considered? I merely got in their way, luckily for the poor creature they were hunting.”

Anduin frowned, setting about tearing the final spear from Wrathion and easing the wound as best he could as he had with prior ones. There was a soft curl of satisfaction at the way Wrathion’s body seemed to finally relax some, wing previously held awkwardly up finally lowering sheepishly that Anduin might set about cutting away the tangled barbed snare with a knife pulled from his belt.

“What were they hunting? In not even a month there will be no way in or out of the valley by foot. They would have been stuck here anyway.” Triumph he found even against grave words, final threads cut away until wing was finally free, Anduin urging Wrathion to stretch it with gentle nudges and wincing as the true extent of rips and tears in delicate membrane was revealed.

“I,” he wavered, “do not think I can do anything for this, I’m–”

“If you apologise,” Wrathion interjected, exhaustion chasing edges of voice, wing shuffling against his body as he finally managed to roll into a more comfortable position before continuing, “I might truly consider eating you. And how should I know what they were looking for? As I told you, I bear no affiliation to them.”

Yet Anduin could not help the feeling settled in his gut that words were not entirely true.

“Why do you not heal yourself? I’m neither blind nor stupid, little human, and I can see well enough that you are able.” Claws tapped briefly as if thinking, before stretching great limbs to settle. “You draw far too much attention to yourself. I’m certain your poor aunt must worry for you if you are always so reckless.”

With an awkward shuffle, Anduin reached gingerly to where blood had wept through his clothing, staining shoulder and oh. Oh dear. Jaina would  _ certainly  _ have questions, ones he didn’t know quite how to answer as he watched Wrathion’s eyes fall closed, watched his breathing even out into steady whuffs, seemingly having the audacity to slip asleep after striking just a little too true to home.

Besides, how might he even begin to explain this?

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the ever wonderful [goldenrule](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenrule).
> 
> You can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/flowermutts) if you want to listen to me occasionally cry about things.


End file.
